by smashing windows at the post office and the Bantu Social Centre; they also cut the post office’s telephone wires and stoned some cars.66
Godfrey Oliphant, who was present at this meeting, places Tsolo Nyakane at the centre of this brawl. He believes the incident was the result of the influence of members of the PAC. ‘There were guys who came in from Vereeniging. One of them was Mr Nyakane [Tsolo], who [made] people realise that they were being harassed by whites.’ He recalled how teacher Ndamse of the ANC stirred up the atmosphere:
[Ndamse] spoke passionately about the attitude of the whites. He [went] to the whites and said, ‘You are treating us like children.’ The whites had the backing of the police. When they started shooting I remained behind because one of my neighbours got shot not dead ... [Amon] Mahomane and my brother Botiki got involved and they were arrested.
What is apparent from Oliphant’s recollection is that at this point the PAC was making inroads into Kroonstad’s black locations. Nyakane was the PAC’s branch secretary in Sharpeville. In the early 1950s a section of the membership of the ANC which referred to itself as the ‘Africanists’ developed some uneasiness with what they perceived as the influence of the communists over the ANC. The tension reached a climax when the ANC invited the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats, the Liberal Party and the South African Coloured People’s Organisation to form a Congress Alliance. Criticism of this move by the Africanists led to some of the leading figures being expelled from the ANC, notably Potlako Kitchener Lebalo.
In 1955 the Congress Alliance adopted the Freedom Charter in Kliptown, outside Soweto. The Freedom Charter was touted as the principles document for a non-racial and inclusive South Africa. The Africanists denounced it as communist inspired. Most importantly, they rejected it because of the controversial preamble: ‘South Africa shall belong to all who live in it’. Simon Ramogale, who joined the PAC in 1960 in Tembisa on the East Rand, and was incarcerated on Robben Island between 1963 and 1966 for his role in the organisation, said: ‘We used to say the land cannot belong to all who live in it; the land must belong to somebody. We had some leaders within the PAC who said, ‘ “South Africa is not a prostitute that belongs to everybody who lives in it ...” ’
In 1958 the Africanists broke away from the ANC and in April 1959 they launched the PAC. In line with the ANCYL’s programme of action, the PAC called for the anti-pass campaign. Leading figures in the PAC travelled across the country mobilising African people for this campaign which was launched on 21 March 1960. It is possible that Nyakane had gone to Kroonstad during this period to canvass support for the PAC there. After all, Kroonstad was a Basotho-dominated area and he, Nyakane, was a Mosotho too.
The shooting and arrests of 1959 did not deter the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations. They demonstrated again in March 1960. The call by the PAC to African men to leave their passes at home and present themselves at the nearby police station for arrest hit the right chord with many African people. Although a clear imbalance was evident in the numbers who participated in this campaign, in Sharpeville and Langa townships masses of people took part; Lodge estimates that in Sharpeville, for example, about 4 000 Africans, men and women, heeded the call.67
After 21 March the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations protested, possibly in solidarity with the victims of the shooting in Sharpeville. The majority of the people interviewed for this study recalled that the residents, at least those who were pass-carrying citizens, had planned to burn their passes. The ANC leaders had announced that Monday 28 March would be a day of pass burning. It is possible that Gladys Mwelase, whom we met earlier, was referring to this protest when she was recalling how Majoro was arrested. In an interview, Violet Motlhacwi remembered the time when Majoro was arrested at a place called thoteng (refuse dumping site), where she had led the residents to burn their passes. But Motlhacwi went on to note that after Majoro and the others had been arrested, Stara Naledi, a prominent businessman in Kroonstad’s locations, sent a certain Gumede to Johannesburg to seek the legal assistance of Oliver Tambo. According to her, Tambo came to Kroonstad and successfully represented Majoro and the others. When they left the court they started singing Raohang masole ntoa ya loana. Hlomelang bohle dira ke tsena (Rise up soldiers. The war is on. Arm yourselves, our enemy is here). It is possible that Majoro and the others were arrested for attempting to burn their passes, but what is not possible is that the arrested residents were represented by Tambo, for when the ANC embarked on the call to burn passes Tambo had already fled South Africa into exile (accompanied by Ronald Segal, he left the country on 27 March – a day before the burning of passes).68 The exaggeration is a good example of the limitations of oral history.
This notwithstanding, days after the Sharpeville massacre the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations took to the streets. This resulted in some arrests. ‘Baba’ Jordan, who was one of those detained in this period, remembers that he was labelled a klipgoeier (stone thrower) by the police, and he was also charged with burning passes.
In 1960 I was seventeen going on for eighteen. I was on my way to school but I had to run back home because youngsters were spreading information that if you are seen wearing a pair of jeans ... without any question they will load you on a police truck as a troublemaker who is busy burning reference books. So my running back home didn’t help me because the whole township, the Old Location was surrounded by police and soldiers. I was taken out of the backyard of my grandmother. Although I never had any bundle of dompasses [reference books] in my hand to burn I was just loaded.
Jordan spent three days at the Klipkraal prison in town and was released after his uncle paid his fine.
The police’s harsh response did not immediately affect the residents’ resolve to continue fighting what they perceived as an unjust system. At this point, some people in the locations were actively working with or had joined the PAC. One of them was John Motsiri Coangae, who claims he was persuaded to join the PAC by Peter Molotsi. Four months after its foundation, the PAC’s national leadership published that in the OFS it had 301 branches.69 It is not clear whether one of these was in Kroonstad, but what is certain is that the PAC cell which operated in Kroonstad was established by Coangae.
After the Sharpeville massacre, the government declared a state of emergency and there were mass detentions of ANC and PAC leaders and supporters. On 8 April 1960 it banned the ANC and PAC. The two organisations decided to turn to the armed struggle and operated from exile. The PAC formed a military wing and called it Poqo (pure, in isiXhosa). Later, Poqo was changed to the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA). The ANC established Umkhonto we Sizwe (spear of the nation, in isiZulu). Initially the PAC operated from Basotholand (now Lesotho), where one of its founders, Leballo, summoned branch members and instructed them ‘to step up recruitment, with each branch having to enlist a target of 1 000 members’.70 Responding to this directive, Coangae and the members of his cell embarked on a membership recruitment campaign. The cell, or at least Coangae, developed networks with some members of the PAC in Lesotho: his father was a church minster and at some point was stationed in Basotholand, where he lived with his son. John Motsiri Coangae was to reignite his childhood friendships in the 1960s, and some of his old friends were now members of the PAC.
At the beginning of the 1960s not only were the police vigilant – they had also created an army of informers to help them. Before long they uncovered the cell’s activity after intercepting a letter Coangae had written to his contact in Maseru informing him about their progress. He remembers: ‘The police intercepted the letter and replied to me and stamped it as if it was from that guy. And they put it in the postbox and told the owner of the firm [where he was working] to send me to fetch the letter. They had been following me all the time, without me knowing.’ The intercepted letter ordered Coangae to meet his contact from Lesotho at a train station. But when Coangae arrived there he was arrested. He was finally sentenced to three years on Robben Island. The arrest and incarceration of Coangae was the final blow to the Kroonstad PAC and also marked the – temporary – end of black political activism in the town. The government’s response had intimidated many people, and after his release from Robben Island Coangae stayed clear of politics because nobody wanted to be associated with him. People were scared to be associated with ‘terrorists’, as the government had termed everybody who opposed it. Instead, he